Various writers have described the tiles’ manufacture, stamps and glazes. They are usually either four and a quarter inches or five and a quarter inches square. The body-clay is red, only slightly worked. The lower surface is rough and sandy. They have bevelled sides as though cut downwards by a knife or wire. It is possible that clay was first rolled on sand to about an inch thick then cut into squares.

The ornamentation is either embossed (which is relatively rare) or in relief. If the hollows were not filled in, the effect is called incised. In true encaustic tiles, the hollows were wider, shallower (rarely exceeding half an inch) and flat-bottomed.  They were usually filled with white pipe clay: the base red clay was  allowed to dry, then covered with soft white clay, and scraped off to level. This is called inlaid. Others just had a fine slip brushed over the face and scraped off; some remained in the very shallow hollows: these might be called enamelled. There are glazes of all shades from yellows and greens to browns and blacks. The stamps were made of wood; the grain sometimes shows in the hollows. Sometimes the stamp cracked, leaving a line across the tile.

The rescue dig of 1985 recovered various roof tiles: four complete, and fragments of a further 15; eight were made of charnwood slate, five of magnesian limestone, three of limestone, one of mudstone, and one of sandstone. They could have come from any part of the monastery.  30 fragments of ceramic roof tile, possibly from the south range roof, were also found.

The rescue dig also found 507 complete floor tiles ‘and over 58 kilos of fragments – the equivalent by weight of a further 116 complete tiles’.  They were of three kinds: counter-relief (21%), two colour (40%) and plain glazed (30%). There were 15 types of design. They date from the late 14th or 15th century. More details of all this may be found in Chris Drage’s report of 1990.